Neither HFF or Winstanley would identify the buyer. Winstanley Enterprises co-owned the 1965 mall, the first two-story mall in New England, with Surrey Equities LLC of New York. The properties were transferred as retail condominium units totaling 226,515 square feet.

Plans to rehab the mall proper are continuing, Winstanley said.

“We sold the Kohl’s and Wal-Mart only,” he said. “The reason we did that was, there is investor demand right now for income-producing properties. This generated proceeds that will help with the rehab of the mall property.”

The 136,000-square-foot Wal-Mart was built in 2000; the 90,515-square-foot Kohl’s was built in 2002, HFF said. The property is located at 650 Bald Hill Road (Route 2) at the intersection of Interstates 295 and 95.

Winstanley has two different sets of construction plans for the mall and an expectation of housing only three or four tenants instead of the 65 tenants once there.

“Right now, it’s a very complex and difficult rehab so we’re working through that,” he said. “It will be a completely different design. You can’t negotiate leases until you understand your construction costs, how to rehab it. This takes some risk out of the project for us because what we’re looking at right now is a 1965 mall that has not had a lot of dollars invested in it so it’s going to be a pretty expensive rehab.”

Winstanley Enterprises LLC is a real estate investment and development firm that currently owns and operates 43 buildings totaling approximately 5.5 million square feet throughout the Northeast.

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